In my classroom, my teacher has done a great job teaching me how this week's readings view literacy instruction. At my school, we use a couple of different literacy programs including the Daily Five and also Making Meaning. My teacher has already incorporated both into our classroom curriculum and has shown me some of the little tricks. For example, Making Meaning is entirely a reading comprehension program. It involves grade level stories and includes group read-alouds, individual reading, whole group and partner discussion, and also a few writing activities. However, we also have the Daily Five program in my classroom which involves five key jobs including Read-to-Self, Work on Writing, Read-to-Someone, Word Works, and Listening-to-Reading. My mentor will gradually teach the class these jobs until they fully understand what is expected of them until Literacy Block can occur.
Literacy Block features guided reading, which allows teachers to work with students using texts appropriate to their reading level. Students not working with the teacher use their time for small group and independent practice including journaling, computer activities, spelling, process writing, etc. Literacy Block is the context in which teachers can explicitly teach, coach, and scaffold students' use of concepts, strategies, and skills tailored to their instructional level-including word-level work, vocabulary students and sight word practice (Raphael, pg. 4).
My teacher has shown me the different ways the programs overlap and has saved me some time and energy so I do not repeat certain lessons when teaching both programs. It also allows for the students to get literacy instruction that transfers over many areas.
Out of the two programs, Daily Five incorporates a majority of the literacies. The students learn the basic skills they need to read by themselves early on. The group practices building their reading stamina, while gathering the necessary tools they need to become successful readers. My mentor will incorporate writing into this procedure by providing students with a brief mini lesson. Last week, the students were taught all about visualization and were able to apply the lesson to their own reading. They were asked to expand on their ideas through own writing and drawing. Once the students were complete with their work, a group discussion/sharing time was offered. This simple exercise hit on all of the main literacies; reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. My mentor is constantly interconnecting Reader’s and Writer’s workshops so that her instruction creates a bridge for the students and their learning.
Everyday, the students are able to write about what they or reading or a piece of literature that we read together. It is important that students get to create their own ideas from literature because it helps them evolve as readers and writers. I loved some of the lessons that my CT did while teaching visualization. For example, we read the book Pigsty a couple of times throughout the week allowing the students ample opportunities to apply there newfound knowledge. At the end of one lesson, all of the students were asked to draw a picture from any scene in the book that they visualized and then write a couple of sentences to go along with it. Some students drew rooms that were disasters, while others drew clean rooms. It was great to see how easy it is to connect different literacies. It just requires some thought and work!
Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. We just started making meaning today, actually, and my students did pretty well with it. I thought it was an interesting program and my mentor teacher explained that she received all of the books and it comes with questions to ask the students. This was great because as classroom teachers it is difficult to stock your classroom with books, and with this program you know you are bring books into the classroom that can be used for literacy lessons.
I also completely agree with you when you say that students need to create ideas from literature. So often we separate reading and writing. Students read from books but then write about their lives without connecting the two. I especially see this in my second grade classroom. I have noticed too while going through DRA's with students they have difficulty writing about what they read. They are able to tell me about the reading but it is much more difficult for them to put it in writing.
Overall very interesting post : )